


Constants

by Anastasia_Fry27



Series: That's It, It's Split, It Won't Recover (just frame the halves, and call them brothers) [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But he's not good at it, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Fluff, Father figure Philza, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, NOT Dadza bc he's only a dad to Wilbur, ONLY platonic in this household, Oops, POV Third Person, Phil's entire character is a father and I don't like it either, Platonic Relationships, Running Away, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, but also uh, but not really Techno, but we need plot progression so he has more drive, like what are your motivations besides your old war buddy, no beta we die like men, see im not so mean, sir we would like to know, technically everything is canon divergent because canon changes every couple hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anastasia_Fry27/pseuds/Anastasia_Fry27
Summary: Constants are a thing that form in every human relationship. Whether it be the pattern of someone’s footsteps or how another comforts those they love. However, you cannot rely on constants forever, it’s simply human nature to need reassurance and change.It turns out no one ever told Phil or his children this.Or,DreamSMP Phil is an absent father and I’m angry so found family angst go brrrrrrrr[This is entirely about the characters of the DreamSMP, not the CC's themselves. If any CC in this or any work of mine mentions they are uncomfortable with fanfictions they will be removed / the work will be entirely deleted.]
Relationships: Philza & Technoblade & Wilbur Soot & Tommyinnit, Stop using real names it's cringe, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: That's It, It's Split, It Won't Recover (just frame the halves, and call them brothers) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149866
Comments: 8
Kudos: 180





	Constants

**Author's Note:**

> Me projecting? I would- Pft- Never not me. Anyway this is a prologue to an eight part series, hope you enjoy! (Also I know I went dark for two years whoops maybe me and Phil have something in common.)

Phil is an adventurer at heart, constantly needing to move and create. Children, he learns, need structure and safety, and most importantly, constants. So, he gives his sons constants.

Every morning after he returns from adventuring, he makes egg and cheese sandwiches on toasted bread for his boys. He boils the water for black tea that Tommy will make a face at every time without fail, and Techno will pretend to enjoy alone, but pours sugar into when his brothers aren’t looking. Wilbur will put milk into it and still barely touch it because it’s “too heavy” of a drink for breakfast and Phil will inevitably waste his ever dwindling stock of tea bags.

When the boy’s wake, he will pat Wilbur on the head, thank him for looking after his brother, and ruffle his youngest's hair. They will sit around the fireplace in the evening while Techno cleans his sword, silently using slow motions to prolong the quiet moment where they are all together, and they will retell their adventures. Phil will recount his time flying above the mountains to build castles and defeat monsters, and Techno will mutter a correction or huff in amusement at a joke. Wilbur will question the music Phil’s come across in the month’s he’s been gone, and will ask how the bread in the village across the valley is, where his friend lives with her parents. And Tommy, his youngest, will sit beside his older brother silently, asking fewer questions as the years go by, instead listening and commenting on how he, in all his experience, could easily fend off a Warden, thank you very much. 

At the end of the night, he will tuck his boy’s into bed, gently stroking each of their foreheads to lull them to sleep. And after repairing fences and checking the crops growing in their garden, he will pack his bag and leave again with Techno at his side. 

The children require constants, and so he will make sure he is as constant as possible. 

~~It's not enough.~~

* * *

Wilbur loves his father, and he never doubts his father loves him back. 

It’s apparent everytime he ruffles his hair, or teaches him how to cook dinner, or how to tend to the fields properly. It’s apparent in the way he makes sure he is safe and comfortable when he leaves on small adventures and travels. 

It’s apparent when he brings a small toddler to the house, sitting beside Wilbur as they assess the boy's wounds. It’s apparent when Wilbur is dead set on nursing the boy back to health, and protests when his father mentions the orphanage in the neighboring town, so his father doesn’t mention it again. It’s apparent how, even when the toddler, Tommy, is able to run on his own two legs again and wreak havoc, Phil will step in when the kid is in danger, and continues to cook extra food for every meal without complaint. 

It’s apparent how he scolds him for eating sand, and entertains his rage filled rants about anteaters. His father still loved adventuring, retelling old stories often, so Wilbur only holds a small kernel of irrational fear that his father would leave him for the vast mountains and unknown plains if given the chance. 

Still, when Phil had sat Wilbur down on the couch after dinner one night, asking Technoblade to help the toddler up to his room and get him settled, Wilbur knew his father loved him. When Phil had asked him to look after alone Tommy while he and Techno went to earn some money, Wilbur had nodded, and made the man walk him through the steps for every possible task Wilbur could think of for the next week, even if he’d been doing it for weeks, or even years. He is being trusted with this, and he will not fail. His father loves him, and he is trusting him with taking care of Tommy fully by himself.

“What if we run out of carrots for stew?” He asks.

  
“Don’t snack too much, and follow the stock book like we always have, and you’ll be fine.”

“What if we get sick?” Wilbur asks.

“Then you make some tea and soup and stay in bed, you won’t catch anything besides a cold since it’s just the two of you. Make sure to bundle up when it gets cold.”

“What if one of us falls out of a tree and breaks our leg?” Phil had looked a bit nervous at this, then hummed and thought a moment, before walking to where their messenger bird sat in it’s cage in the corner of the living room. 

“You send a message to the guards outpost, on Willow Mountain, just past the bend in the river. They’ll help you.”

Wilbur made sure to keep track of any questions he had while Phil was gone. On some nights where it took Tommy longer to settle than usual, the toddler always fussy, especially when scared with nightmares, they’d sit at the kitchen counter, or on the bench swing on the front porch, and write all their questions in the journal Wilbur kept close to him. As Phil’s adventures grew longer, as did the journal's list of uses. It began with Wilbur simply wanting to remember to tell his father some of the sillier babbles from the toddler, or how he’d run before he’d walked, then Tommy’s first words, then stories he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget. It morphed into a quote book with minimal context to a weekly routine of writing whatever memory caught his attention. 

He can’t quite pinpoint when he’d started telling stories selectively, when the journal stopped making an appearance at the dinner table during his fathers visits, instead sitting on his windowsill full of stories he’d decided he didn’t want to tell, but never wanted to forget. But he reminded himself his father still loved him, it wasn’t Wilbur’s fault the man also loved adventuring.

Perhaps, he thinks, it’s when the milestones he was missing in their lives began to add up. Perhaps it’s when he’s standing in the kitchen, dosing medication that he realizes. Tommy was still fighting some sickness he somehow managed to contract yearly, and Phil had been worried, this being the first time he was home to witness it, and was thinking of taking him to a doctor. 

Wilbur had simply walked up to Tommy’s bedside, taken a quick glance to assess what the problem was, then shrugged, leaving the room with a simple, “Doctor said there’s nothing we can do, just wait for his body to work itself out. I’ll get his meds though, they help.” 

His father still loved them, he told himself as he pulled the leaves packaged in brown paper from the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. His father still loved them, he just wasn’t around to see how they managed day to day, that’s all. 

His father still loved him.  ~~ Right? ~~

~~ When had he started saying it as a mantra instead of fact? ~~

* * *

Technoblade isn’t a fool, he notices the slowly growing distance between him and Wilbur, it seems to grow into a chasm as Tommy gets older with the ever passing years, and as Phil, unknowingly, makes fewer trips home throughout the year. 

Technoblade cares for the group, though he may not consider himself Phil’s son, he cares for their ragtag group. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t consider himself a part of their family that he notices how Willbur’s quipps grow further and fewer between, how the two other boys have stopped eagerly telling Phil about the moments he missed out on, and instead allow the conversation to be comfortable and slow. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t consider himself a part of their family that he notices the slow growing resentment building in the other two boys. 

How they wordlessly wash the dinner dishes without allowing a comment to be made on it, letting the conversation continue or fall into comfortable silence. How Tommy has stopped asking to see his weapons whenever Techno polishes them, which always ended in a dare to spar together. Now the grass in the backyard goes untouched, weeds growing in the sandpit they used as grounds for their lighthearted fights. Technoblade notices how Tommy stops stealing his crown after dinner, forcing him to chase the child around the house until the younger boy collapses in a fit of giggles and is thrown over Techno’s shoulder in defeat. Technoblade notices how Wilbur stops cooking their favorite meals during their stay. The first time Techno had believed him when Wilbur had said they simply didn’t have the ingredients, seeing as their visit was unexpected.

Techno caught the word choice though, Phil didn’t seem to, ever oblivious to the shifting gears of his own family. 

_ Visit _ , Wilbur had said, cadence not faltering as he served warm soup.  _ Not return, no, visit _ . 

But that’s fine, he thinks, he isn’t truly their brother, Phil’s just his mentor who had let him into his home with a warm smile and assurance he belonged. Despite this, he finds himself hesitating in front of Tommy’s door one night, hand raised to knock and wish him good sleep, he wonders if he too should adjust with them. He gently knocks on the door, and when he receives no answer, he silently opens the door, just a crack, and sees the slow rise and fall of Tommy’s chest as the boy breaths. And Technoblade shuts the door softly, and retires to the room that has always been his, crisp sheets and dust laying on every surface. It felt cold and unfamiliar, the sheets a plain white cotton and pillows propped up against the headboard, it felt like a guest room, a show room in a foreign house. 

~~ But when had he become a guest in Phil’s home again? ~~

* * *

Tommy had been adopted young, they don’t know his exact age but he’d been declared three by Phil while the man cradled the boy in his arms, slowly but steadily making his way through the forest that had scared Tommy since the moment he had been chased past the trees at the edge. 

Despite the blur of youth, he still remembers how the forest had felt a bit brighter when he’d met the man’s gaze, the man surprised to find a child skillfully wedged between the upper branches of a dark oak tree. Despite the pity that Tommy had already grown to hate, he’d allowed the man to gently pull him from the tree. He’d allowed himself to be cradled close to the man's chest as he was walking through the dark trees that scared him so very much, he’d hesitantly allowed himself to feel safe with the rumble of the man’s voice against his cheek. He’d surprised himself by allowing all this without much thought, simply too tired to run at the moment. 

More surprisingly, he’d stayed.

(Though over the years, the memory had faded to the vague feeling of warm arms around him in contrast to the sharp, cold winds biting at his skin, he held it dearly, even as details escaped him.)

When he awoke, not remembering having fallen asleep, he had opened his eyes to the man from before sitting beside the bedroom door, and a young boy with brown hair slumped against the window in a chair beside the bed. He doesn’t expect the boy to greet him kindly, after waking up with a start, explaining that the man, Phil, had brought him back late. That the cut on his leg was going to heal just fine.

When Tommy noticed the green tinge of his skin as the boy, Wilbur, changed the bandages on his leg, the other boy had simply smiled and said, “Well how do you think Phil found you? All he wears is green, your green leg must’ve drawn him to you! It’s nothing to fret about,” Wilbur had then ruffled his hair, and left with a promise to return with warm soup. 

Tommy had settled in quite easily after that, meeting Phil’s student, Technoblade, who wasn’t afraid to grab him by the ankle and hold him upside down when he was being a nuisance (which, although Tommy himself will never admit,  _ was _ pretty often when back when they lived together.) Phil would sit beside his bed each night and recall stories of epic fights and victories, thumb rubbing his forehead. He’d trail off with a soft smile when he saw his youngest ward losing his own fight with staying awake. For the first year, where nightmares were near constant, and adventures were short and rare, Tommy always fell asleep to his blankets being tucked tighter against him. 

As the years passed, and adventures meant Phil being gone for months at a time, always accompanied by Technoblade, Wilbur was constant, and never left, even when given the opportunity to meet his best friend, a girl who lived in a village across the valley who he’d only ever met once before, and exchanged hundreds of letters with, he’d bundled Tommy up for the cold weather, and they’d made the three day journey in the merchant’s carriage together. 

It was Wilbur who sat beside his bed when he grew sick, or broke his leg from a nasty fall from a tree. It was Wilbur who stroked his forehead when he woke with nightmares. It was Wilbur who would pull a warm sweater over Tommy’s arms and lead him to the kitchen, where the biggest window sat above the sink, and they’d sip warm milk while watching the stars. 

Somehow, over the years Tommy stopped jumping to greet Phil at the door, he stopped eagerly recounting the highlights (or what his young mind considered highlights) of the past few months, instead waiting to be prompted, and telling only what he thought most interesting. Perhaps it was a silent plea to be more palatable, less loud and rambunctious, he’s not sure when he started feeling like the man before him was more of a stranger than a father figure.

He realizes, one night, as he’s waiting for Phil’s footsteps to signal he was coming to say goodnight, that the heavy feeling in his chest was dread. The routine somehow felt foreign and disingenuous, despite the ever present warmth in Phil’s eyes and his determination to not break tradition, Tommy finds himself going to bed earlier when they visit the house, hoping to fall asleep before Phil makes his rounds and Technoblade knocks on the door gently to wish him goodnight. 

Sometimes he does not go to bed early enough, or perhaps Phil is catching on despite no one saying a word, but sometimes he is only on the cusp of sleep when the floorboards creak, and Phil settles into  Will’s his chair, rubbing his forehead like nothing has changed and all these years later he is still the five year old he found. 

~~ When had the motion stopped being soothing, and instead something he dreaded? ~~

**Author's Note:**

> Accidentally dug up old childhood memories I forgot existed and said “eh, throw em in for flavor and realness” now I’m hurt. While editing I noticed some more unconscious ones now I’m sad again while editing. Anyway I hope you enjoyed!! <3! I told myself I wouldn’t post this until I had more works in at least the late editing stages so I don’t pull a two year hiatus again (oops). If this was posted alone though it’s cause I felt I was taking too long so uh, bye kids heading out to get milk again lol.
> 
> Also I thrive off of comments, I reread them all the time so feel free to yell at me or request something, worst I can do is say no!


End file.
